Cool! When I scrolled down to the section called "The Central Role of Language", I realized that the "anti-mac" concept was something I could work with. I am a believer in the concept of leveraging Javascript in order to devise a kind of higher level computing language that can deal very well in human concepts. Think of it as a kind of highly structured natural language, and we can start really getting on our way. The problem is that programmers and logically-minded people in general need to start getting creative with how they think about computers.
When I scroll through this list on any given day, I am often quite disheartened by the utter lack of trying to think of Javascript at a higher level. There is often so much discussion concerning issues that are well on their way to becoming irrelevant anymore. Whether to fork off node or whether to make it threaded, for example. But node is really good enough for anything that can be reasonably thrown at it. I remember hearing Ryan talking about the fact that node can always be made to be faster, but that the real increase in speed occurred between the leap from the pre-node world to the post-node world. I think it's high time for many programmers to just take a little breather to think about where we can go next. I recommend really meditating on some of those Crockford youtube videos, and start thinking about what it really means that we have a blazing fast DOM-aware prototypal scripting language that uses first order functions. It's all pretty mind blowing when you really think about it. Developers are just so damn scared to actually *use* the language rather than just using some dumb library that forces you to think in a certain way about in-browser programming. My API is currently a little messy, but from the beginning, I wanted to focus on keeping it exceedingly simple and intuitive. There are function calls like make_desktop(), make_window(), and make_icon(). Kids will be able to type these into their browser consoles and see magic happen in front of their eyes. I'm talking about giving kids of the same kind of experience that us 30 or 40-somethings had when we tapped those BASIC programs from BYTE magazine into black screens with glowing green characters. In today's world, there is such a schism between the experiences of end users and developers. When I was in 5th grade, we had a programming class taught by our Math teacher. These kinds of things are extremely important to teach kids when their minds are eager to learn. So basically, the way that we think about what our computers are all about needs to start evolving, and it is really up to programmers to start programming in ways that are new/exciting/experimental (just like when we were kids!) rather than so mind numbingly dull. On Thursday, September 27, 2012 1:26:06 PM UTC-4, P. Douglas Reeder wrote: > > One mashup to rule them all? That's a tall order. > > If you're looking to supplant the WIMP paradigm, you should be familiar > with "The Anti-Mac Interface" (really a post-Macintosh UI): > http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html > > -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to nodejs@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nodejs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
